


I Won't Let Go (of your hand)

by angeloncewas



Category: Dream SMP - Fandom, Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Denial, Gen, Ghost Wilbur Soot, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Introspection, Nightmares, Toby Smith | Tubbo Has PTSD, Toby Smith | Tubbo-centric, Traumatized Tommyinnit (Video Blogging RPF), alive wilbur is very plot-relevant though, and then more hurt, death talk, it's complicated - Freeform, percieved denial?, platonic soulmate type beat, un-beta'd
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-21
Updated: 2021-01-21
Packaged: 2021-03-13 01:54:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28895436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angeloncewas/pseuds/angeloncewas
Summary: Tubbo has Tommy within arm's reach now that Dream is the common enemy. No matter how much of a relief that is in the days leading up to their final battle, it makes it ever more apparent how wide the gap between them is.-He calls it Snowchester. He calls it home. He calls it hope.Tommy calls it denial.
Relationships: No Romantic Relationship(s), Tommyinnit & Toby Smith | Tubbo
Comments: 12
Kudos: 199





	I Won't Let Go (of your hand)

**Author's Note:**

> I started this before the nuke reveal and meant to finish it before the finale, whoops. Credit to [this post](https://badschlatt.tumblr.com/post/640327519862685696/not-to-be-emo-on-main-but-like-im-kinda-obsessed) for the inspiration.

It’s possible that fatigue is to a president as a crown is to a king.

The mirror in the White House is gone now, razed with the rest of the country, but the reflection Tubbo saw in it still haunts him. The shadows under his skin, more Wilbur than himself. The mess of hair atop his head far too familiar, even without horns nestled within.

 _“If I die, this country goes down with me,”_ Schlatt had said, body trembling and bottle dangling from his fingertips.

L’manberg had taken him. Folded him back into its story and silenced his screams. Then it took Wilbur; the only star-crossed-lovers worth noting, a man and his country.

They were never more alike than in death. A captain is meant to sink with his ship.

Eret’s crown is a worthless thing, just like the title Tubbo’s taken off and laid to rest, yet the weariness in his limbs persists.

Tubbo has to wonder if he wasn’t meant to outlive what killed all the others.

History will mark him down as a significant figure, the first to come after all of the nothing. L’manberg’s youngest, longest-leading, last president.

Each who came before poured their entire being into the country until there was nothing left, but it’s not as though Tubbo had much to begin with.

His house’s destruction kickstarted the war for L’manberg’s independence. He was the only one who actually spent time with Eret, only to be double-crossed. He decorated his own execution.

What’s the reward for putting all your eggs in one basket, even before it’s fully built to be a nest?

Sometimes people forget Tubbo left behind a life of order for this, to be with Tommy and Wilbur in their whims of fantastical power.

_“You get pushed around by everybody,”_ Dream had mocked. He’d called Tubbo a terrible president and the words hadn't stung, just echoed. 

_“You’re just a yes-man, aren’t you?”_

If Tubbo could speak one question into the void, through the layers of whatever universe left Ghostbur vacant-eyed and Jack Manifold resigned, he’d ask Wilbur what compelled him to make Tubbo president.

_“You’re a good kid, and an even better spy.”_

He wonders how things would’ve been different had he declined like Tommy had. Would he have been the hero then, instead of a rehashed villain in someone else’s story?

* * *

Missing someone who’s still around is something Tubbo probably should be used to by now considering _Ghostbur-_ a remnant of memory with a voice- but he’s still surprised by the longing that strikes him as he looks Niki in the eye.

They’re standing on the Prime Path just as the sun dips past the museum roof. Light bounces off of Niki’s diamond armor and refracts in the shadow of her empty flower shop. She looks more ready for combat than conversation.

 _This can’t be the only person who tried to save me at the Festival,_ Tubbo thinks. _Surely not._

Not with that burn behind her expression, the fire that he knows has touched her hands and scorched the land she once loved just as much as he did.

“What are you going to do now?” she asks.

Earnestness permeates her words and softens the obviously sharp edges that surround her, but Tubbo can’t help but feel as though the whole thing’s a snake in the grass. This is the girl who screamed at Schlatt; Tubbo has long ago learned not to underestimate her. 

He taps his foot against the walkway, the beat a metronome that his heart tries to outspeed.

“Well, I’m not president anymore-”

_“Obviously.”_

“-so I think I’ll just work with Tommy. Follow his lead.”

Niki adjusts the sword on her hip with a sigh. “Why do you trust him?”

The retort that sits on his tongue would be poor form. After all, Niki wasn’t a part of Pogtopia. Not till the end, at least. She doesn’t know about how Tommy was the eye of Tubbo’s storm. Of the clandestine meetings at their bench. Of the way they agreed to stick together _no matter what._

She doesn’t know that Tommy would spend hours trying to convince Wilbur that Tubbo wasn’t actually a traitor. She doesn’t know that it never quite worked - that just as Niki was begging for Technoblade to lower his crossbow, Wilbur was assuring Tubbo _“he won’t hurt you.”_

They’ve never spoken about Wilbur, the ghost at every turn, but Tubbo is kind of tired of trying to read every empty room he enters. It’s what forged Niki and his friendship; they’ll mock you for what you say and berate you for being quiet.

Tubbo shrugs. “Why did you trust Wilbur?”

Her lack of an answer feels like a rare victory. It also feels a bit like guilt.

* * *

“You took a hit for me.”

Tommy’s voice is hushed beneath the torch glow, a question tucked neatly into a statement of fact. During ‘doomsday,’ Tubbo had jumped in front of Tommy to save him from Technoblade. He just hadn't realized that Tommy had noticed.

It’d make more sense to say it was terrifying- not to say it wasn’t, the very weapon that had claimed one of his lives leveled at his best friend’s head- but faced with the reality of the situation and the weapon’s taut string, Tubbo hadn’t even hesitated.

Silence settles and sits around them, its uninvited company not entirely unwelcome.

Neither of them have ever been good with expressing their emotions through actual words.

When they were young and their knees got all scraped up from roughhousing, adults would coo at Tubbo’s docile manner. He wouldn’t cry or raise a fuss, only tell them it hurt and wait for his turn to get attention.

Tommy, meanwhile, never admitted pain. He’d wait until Tubbo came back and then complain for ages about how bored he’d been.

Tubbo would give him half of his own bandages every time.

Some things never change, and others are frightening in their unfamiliarity.

“I’d do it again,” Tubbo replies.

Gold seems to glint off of Tommy as he shakes his head. “You shouldn’t. We’d both go out that way. I- and I- I mean, I reckon we will anyway.”

Fun slips away from Tommy when they’re alone. He stops pretending to be the kid L’manberg threw off of that obsidian wall and it sharpens his most worrying traits. He’s more pensive. More nihilistic.

Tubbo knows it's his fault without any bitterness or self-hatred. They can dance the name _Dream_ around on the edge of their swords for as long as they’d like, but Dream was never president of the country Wilbur left behind.

Dream never did to Tommy what Tubbo did, didn’t tear him away from the scraps of what he loved for something that ultimately didn’t even matter.

“We’re almost out of chances, Tubbo,” Tommy adds. “I’m only being realistic.”

This is a conversation they’ve had upwards of a hundred times now and Tubbo is painfully aware of this gash in their friendship, the open wound put to the wayside in favor of more pressing issues.

“I want to have a plan, for after we win,” he murmurs, instead of acknowledging any of it.

Tommy leans over and rests his head on Tubbo’s shoulder, the weight familiar. His blond hair, now loose and unkept, is scratchy against Tubbo’s skin and he sighs something quiet, as if the weight of the world they’ve shaped shifts with his movements.

“I just don’t want you to be disappointed when-”

“If!”

 _“If-_ if it- if it never comes.”

“I won’t know anyway, will I?” Tubbo ignores the way Tommy twitches and the way his own lungs seem to contract. “If I’m gone, my feelings will be too.”

The next day he goes, promising a time to be back by and lacing his fingers through Tommy’s for only a second before he leaves. It’s childish, they’re so far past being able to take their enemies by the hand and lead them away from any chaos that may come, but it’s comforting in its simplicity.

Tubbo travels for so long the land seems to blur together, oak pillars and spruce gateways leading toward the future he is all but demanding. Bitter cold flushes his cheeks and he’s grateful for the heavy winter coat that never got any use during the first war, a _maybe_ left incomplete as all battle occured over amicable climate.

Teeth chattering slightly, Tubbo reaches the top of the hill he’d decided to climb and looks around. Down below, there’s a lush forest lining a frozen lake; it glows like a beacon under the distant sun.

In a flash, he understands why Technoblade made his home in the northern tundra. The white coating every visible inch is vast and empty and perfect. So unlike the clutter of the past. 

_This place,_ he decides, will house his soul. Just as L’manberg cradled Wilbur’s and claimed Schlatt’s.

He calls it Snowchester. He calls it home. He calls it hope.

Tommy calls it denial.

* * *

There are days where Tubbo misses the weight of the compass he’d once kept on a chain. Tommy’s _with him_ so it doesn’t quite make sense, but breaking that thing had felt like every shattered promise from SMP territory to the distant island of Tommy’s exile.

Their cots sit only a couple feet apart, Tubbo having agreed to stay with Tommy for the time being, but he’s not sure how much distance lies between them, even now.

Case and point, just before sunrise. Tommy’s dirt hut is mildly warm and feels more wide than it would by day, darkness pressing against its sides. Tommy himself is temporarily gone. Refusing to sleep, opting instead to try and enchant his equipment.

“Are you going to take very long?” Tubbo had asked.

“No idea, could be quick, could take a while.”

Tommy’s fingers drummed against the plating of his armor as he gathered items from various chests; he’d seemed on edge so Tubbo hadn’t said anything more.

Darkness is difficult to manage. Sleep is a friend long-forgotten, what with all that rises to meet Tubbo when he shuts his eyes.

He dreams how Tommy talks: vibrant and colorful. Tubbo’s nightmares feature piercing voices and bursts of light that race across his vision.

_Big Q’s face to his right, watching him be executed. Wilbur, wild eyes and the wind in his hair. Schlatt praising him as a right-hand man. The press of metal against his temple as he looks Technoblade in the eyes._

Fireworks, sunsets, lamps lining wood pathways. Tubbo’s nightmares scorch and fizzle like a fever.

Even at the start of it all, when nights had still been quiet, Tubbo and Tommy had opted to sleep in the same room. Wilbur used to make fun of them for it, the fierceness of their friendship and the ease of its comfort.

It became more insults than light-hearted toward the end, but neither of them ever really blamed him for it. A bond like theirs is uncommon in any world, especially one at war, and to a madman. Wilbur had been convinced an enemy was hidden behind every ribcage for miles.

Theirs kept their hearts steady, beats measured and in sync under a soundless sky. It was Tommy’s shoulder that clicked against his own as they awaited their last breaths in a broken room with empty words. Tubbo had agreed to be a part of L’manberg in the first place only because Tommy had been so adamant.

Tubbo knows Tommy better than the land he once claimed ownership of, or even his own memory at times. Seeing Tommy after the exile, things battered and bruised and broken in places Tubbo didn’t understand and couldn’t reach, had been worse than anything his nightmares could offer him.

That’s why the unspoken _everything_ in their evenings is so frustrating. With Tommy uncharacteristically withdrawn and the wall of _something_ just behind the blue pigment of his eyes, Tubbo can’t seem to get into Tommy’s head anymore.

Tommy doesn’t wake up screaming like Tubbo does. He’s oddly quiet, in fact. He gets up early and paces small circles, muttering _Dream_ like an admission of guilt for something Tubbo can never decipher.

“If you ever want to talk about it,” Tubbo had offered one morning.

“About what?”

“You know…”

Tommy rolled his eyes pointedly. “No, I don’t. Stop being- stop being cryptic.”

“Well uh, your dreams? You don’t seem to sleep much.”

There’d been a distinct pause, as though someone had frozen the scene for safekeeping.

“I don’t,” Tommy had whispered, and they’d moved on without any resolution.

* * *

On days where the silence across Snowchester feels more like confinement than comfort, Tubbo wants to be mad at Tommy.

Not for the wars they’ve fought, or the cauterized scars that mark their skin, or even their words (at the wall, selfish - at the community house, worthless), but for the way they never got sufficiently upset about any of it.

Tommy acts as though their first lives weren’t lost together, swallowed in the sound of Wilbur’s cries as Dream and his comrades burst through the wall.

It’s not fair to either of them. Tubbo, allowed to grieve the abstract thing they’ve lost through all this, but only able to do it alone. Tommy, the opposite, a forced grin in the midst of a crowd.

They call Tommy loud, Tubbo knows. Back when it was more humor than hostility, Tubbo was the quiet sidekick and he’d never really minded because Tommy would always make room for him to scream if he needed it.

Tommy’s the loud boy, but no one’s ever listening.

If they were, they’d recognize that it’s all fluff. Filler, white noise, not once since Tommy took in a shuddering breath and turned to face Technoblade has he said anything of substance.

Tubbo asks him what happened in the months they were apart and Tommy’s answer is never enough to count as one at all. Tommy readies his sword when Tubbo wishes they could do more than reconcile with cracked bones.

Everyone knows Tommy’s ready to die for what he believes in, but Tubbo’s not sure if Tommy, like Wilbur, ever learned where the line is between preparation and planning.

* * *

Ghostbur’s smile is soft and curious, his fingers wound in Friend’s wood. “Why build a house if you're planning to die?”

“We’re not _planning_ on dying, that’d be terrible,” Tommy laughs. “We're just willing to.”

If Tubbo were a bit more morbid, perhaps having lived only through the mass-destruction of a nation twice over and not three times, he would laugh too. At the irony within that statement. At one more secret only he and Tommy share.

In his crusade for closure, Tommy’s had to explain his thought process a lot. The people he reaches out to always come back concerned with his attitude, the stillness in his limbs and the smile he greets them with.

He responds by acting unbothered by the looming threat and it comes across as reckless, but Tubbo knows better.

There are letters tucked underneath a floorboard of Tommy’s house. For Niki. For Ranboo. For real, alive Wilbur, should Phil somehow succeed in his quest for his son back. Tommy hasn’t told anyone what exactly is in them, but their use is pretty obvious.

They’re the goodbyes he won’t be saying.

Tubbo wants more than that. He’s always wanted more than Tommy; safety over justice and friendship over deep-rooted sentiment. But the discs are what _Tommy_ wants and so for them, Tubbo is willing to cross the world and attempt to destroy its creator.

_I’ve let Tommy down enough,_ he reminds himself. Through every inhale of dust from the mines and exhale onto hands raw from smithing, Tubbo pushes down his apprehension and focuses on the fact that they’ve made it this far and they’re going forward together.

He gets armor, weapons, equipment; enchantment books and draughts of any kind and color. The day of reckoning is fast approaching when he ushers Tommy towards his hidden holiday home and guides him to stand in front of a smooth wall of stone.

In Snowchester, there are no rulers. No masters of men, no kings with any power or presidents with agendas. There is just the two of them. Against a being they’ve beaten once before. With things waiting for them once they’re done.

Tubbo pushes a button and everything clicks and whirs, the hidden door opening to reveal what he’s been affectionately thinking of as _the Vault._

“I think we’re gonna be alright,” he says, smiling at the shock that slides across Tommy’s face.

There’s a weight to Tubbo’s bones as he leans against the stairway railing and watches his friend examine all he’s worked for. It feels like fatigue, like the burden of experience that comes with age neither of them actually have.

Their story has stretched long and this is the undeniable end of the chapter, but they’ve argued back-and-forth over Tommy’s conviction that it is the end of the narrative entirely.

“We’ve got this,” Tubbo repeats.

Privately though, he wonders if he’s in denial.

**Author's Note:**

> To conclude:
> 
> \- I really enjoyed the finale  
> \- Head hurt, am sleepy  
> \- Tommy is so hard to write because he's always half-joking  
> \- I am chewing very stale gum  
> \- Check me out on Tumblr! Same @, I'm a glorified Ranboo fanblog


End file.
